Kuokaj
Kuokaj's childhood was marked with constant episodes of fierce violence. Since his birth into the violent Gob'tak Klinast Kuokaj was forced into single combat with his older siblings in order to establish pecking order, and runty Kuokaj was forced into the lowly duty of manacle-man. Kuokaj duties as manacle-man were to be chained to the more distempered and powerful slaves so that they are less likely to escape. If the slave managed to kill the manacle-man, they would still have to drag his corpse along with them as they fled. As Kuokaj reached maturity, his spindly arms never seemed to bulk up, and he was forced to wait for his brothers and sisters to have their fill at feeding time. Despondently, Kuokaj retreated into himself, and his social skills deteriorated. His siblings were a full two years into their growth spurt before Kuokaj had gained five pounds, and already his growth had seemed to slow. As Kuokaj's Klinast became increasingly more aware of Kuokaj's inability to grow, his rations were further decreased and he became ill. His habitual retreats into himself became shockingly more realistic, and in one exceptionally vivid fantasy, he falls into a feverish daydream. He awakens to find himself surrounded by the other manacle-men screaming at him. His charge, a particularly strong and therefor valuable dwarf slave, escaped. The Krolvin spent hours searching for the dwarf in the near vicinity, and after they were unsuccessful, Kuokaj was abandoned by his klinast and left to fend for himself in the wilds. He clamored past a boulder to escape a rainstorm and spent his first night alone in the wild howling fiendishly at the full moon clouded by the countenance of the building storm. The climax of the violent storm was punctuated by a bright burst of lightning, and the brief instant of light in the otherwise inescapable darkness of the cave was just enough to show Kuokaj a patch of mushrooms hidden under an outcropping in the rock. Without thought, Kuokaj hurriedly ate all of the mushrooms, and for a moment, he was satiated, and his fever broke. Relaxing like he hadn't in years on the Krolvin compound, he dosed off to sleep. His dreams were terrible, and in them he was visited by a large man with a jackal's head. The man offered him strength of body if he would only offer him his mind as a host as for his nightmarish fantasies. Kuokaj remembers little of his nightmares that night, but when he awoke, the poisonous mushrooms had begun to take effect. As the rays of light from the dawn began to pierce the infinite darkness of the night before, Kuokaj began to hallucinate. The motes of light illuminating tiny dust particles were tiny impish monsters, howling and berating him for his weakness. The wet rocks glistened with what seemed to be blood, and the docile flora and fauna around the cave appeared deady and violent. The darkness of the cave interior behind him reminded him of the jackal man, and in a fit of terror, he fled the cave. For days he wandered the wilderness, stopping only to sip at brackish waters, or to vomit up anything he tried to keep down. In a moment of poetic justice, Kuokaj stumbled across the sleeping dwarf that had escaped from him before. Kuokaj had learned violence from his warlike brothers and sisters, and he had learned the concept of revenge, but his terrible fever, compounded by the hallucinogenic mushrooms and his terrible nightmares, gave rise to a greater desire than simple violent retribution. Kuokaj slipped a set of manacles from his pack around his wrist and silently clamped the other end to the dwarf. He concentrated on the image of the great jackal-man from the night before. Faintly at first, a foreign tongue began to whisper inside of Kuokaj's battered mind. The whispers crescendoed into cacophony and, Kuokaj realized, it was glorious. With just a few whispered words into the dwarfs ear, his sleep became fitfull. Throughout the rest of the night, Kuokaj lay at the dwarfs side, clamping his free hand futilely about his ears, trying to silence the voices. He felt the strength of the dwarf ebb and travel through the conduit of the manacle, into his own shield arm, and invade his torso and legs. As the whimpers of the dwarf faded, Kuokaj own nightmares clambered for his attention, and slowly he fell into restless sleep. He dreamed of a great cavernous city filled with dwarfs working on mines and laboring at forges. And he dreamed of the slaves family, his wife and children, who themselves called out to their father, to their husband, while they fitfully shook in their sleep. He woke to find the dwarf dead, and with uncharacteristic strength he carried the dwarf to the beach to bury him. Kuokaj broke the manacle connecting him to the dwarf, and began to dig. When he dug the grave deep enough, he rolled the sallowed flesh of the dwarf over the precipice and filled it. He returned to his cave. In time, Kuokaj's size caught up to his new found strength, and he learned to live off the land. However, the months of isolation in his cave weakened his sanity, and the terrible dreams of a rotted and waterlogged dwarf reaching for his throat brought him near suicide. He thought of returning to his family, but knew that they would not recognize him, grown as he had. Instead, he decided to leave his island by stowing away on a Rafi'kaes Klinast boat. He escaped when the sailors left to raid the mainland for new slaves, and wandered to the gates of the Landing. The jackal-man still haunts his dreams, and reminds him of the promise he made in the cave. Category:Platinum Profiles